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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N693, June 5, 2022
Early Mediumwave Radio in the Canadian Province of Manitoba
Because of the declining state of international events in Europe more than one hundred years ago, the British government ordered the closure of all amateur and non-essential wireless stations on Saturday, August 1, 1914. Next day (Sunday August 2, 1914), the Canadian government enacted a similar regulation, calling for the closure of all amateur and non-essential wireless stations throughout the dominion. At the time, there were only 79 licensed amateur wireless stations in Canada, though it is suggested that ten times that number were active, though unlicensed.
(It is interesting that although the governments of Britain and Canada enacted similar restrictive regulations, the United States, of course, from 1914-1917 remained neutral regarding the open hostilities in continental Europe, and thus American amateur stations were permitted to remain active, though under the aegis of the United States Navy, and with the implementation of specified restrictions.)
On Tuesday, August 4 (1914), two days after the closure of amateur stations in Canada, war was declared between England and Germany, and later that same day, Canada also enacted a similar declaration of war against Germany.
Many Canadian amateur wireless operators subsequently continued to practice their Morse Code capability by tuning in to the daily signals from the well-known American naval wireless station NAA, at Arlington in Virginia. Then too, many Canadian amateur wireless operators enlisted for active wartime service in wireless communication in continental Europe.
Nearly five years later, after the Great War, World War (I) was over and the world had begun to settle down somewhat, Canadian amateur radio operators were again permitted to resume their regular normal experimental activities, beginning from April 15 (1919) onwards.
However, one month to the day later, on May 15 (1919), landline telephone operators and postal employees went on strike in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Some 30,000 workers were on strike in Canada's third-largest city, and they urged better working conditions and wages, with perhaps a touch of communist ideology, as was evident in several European countries at the time. This massive strike, the largest in Canadian history, effectively brought economic activity in Winnipeg to a standstill, and it also isolated the city news wise from the rest of Canada for some 6 weeks.
Almost a week later, in the evening of Wednesday, May 21 (1919), three licensed amateur wireless operators installed one of their wireless stations on the roof top of the quite recently erected six storied Free Press Building at 300 Carlton Street in Winnipeg. The simple antenna system was attached to the flag pole.
Over a period of about two weeks, that informal wireless station in Winnipeg, with its 1/4 inch spark, was able to communicate with a similar station at the University of North Dakota, though amateur wireless activity in the United States had not yet been relicensed after the end of the war. In this way, Winnipeg was to a certain extent brought back out of its unintended isolation.
That informal wireless station also obtained regular news via the daily Morse Code bulletins from the same American naval station NAA, as well as from another Morse Code wireless station located in Mexico. With this rather limited inflow of news and information, the Free Press in Winnipeg was able to print and issue a flat sheet for public distribution.
Would you know it, just half a year later, the three daily newspapers in Winnipeg used up all of their huge rolls of rationed news print paper. One amateur wireless operator provided news from NAA and other Morse Code wireless stations, and thus at least one newspaper was able to print a few sheets of news for the public, again on flat plate sheets.
During the autumn of the year 1921, the Kelvin Radio Club, in the rather new Kelvin Technical High School at the southern edge of the city, went on the air with the broadcast of music from its own informal amateur station. That station was on the air with the legal callsign XEY, which was the style for amateur radio callsigns in Canada back then. Several years later, the callsign XEY was applied to a mediumwave station in Mexico.
That high school radio station was on the air with a portable war surplus transmitter, an English-made Marconi Mark 2 unit with 20 watts input. The transmitter was located in the school basement, and the antenna was installed on the northeast corner of the school roof.
The station was operated by three licensed young men, and the only music record they possessed featured an old, well-scratched 78 rpm version of the March of the Toreadors, the same melody that you heard at the beginning of our program today. They would open the broadcast of each program with that record as their identification melody, though on Saturdays they also made an amateur QSO with station 9YAF at the Pembina High School in Pembina, ND
A few months later, a new regularly-licensed mediumwave broadcasting station in Winnipeg made its first broadcast one hundred years ago, in February 1922, a little ahead of receiving its formal license from Ottawa. The station was owned and operated by Lynn Salton, who was the government License Inspector for the Western Provinces of Canada, and it was installed in his home at 1164 Grosvenor Avenue in Winnipeg. (If you are the government licensed inspector, you can bend the rules just a little!)
That new station was supported also by the Winnipeg Free Press, and they wished to launch their regularly licensed station ahead of their rival newspaper, the Winnipeg Evening Tribune. Salton was granted the callsign CJCG, the original operating channel was 420 m. (715 kHz), and the output power of the transmitter was just 10 watts. The regular sign on routine each day for station CJCG began with the El Capitan March, which you will hear at the end of this program today.
The official opening program for the inauguration was hurriedly assembled in order to be ahead of their rival, and the station was launched initially under Salton's own amateur callsign 4AH. That first official broadcast included recorded and live music, local information, and a talk by Salton's pastoral father, Dr. George F. Salton. But anyway, they achieved their purpose, and station 4AH-CJCG was on the air as the first regularly licensed mediumwave radio broadcasting station in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
More about the early radio broadcasting scene in Winnipeg Manitoba, next time.